On January 13, 2009, a week before President Obama was sworn in, nearly two hundred attended the Smith-Mundt Symposium at the Reserve Officers Association on Capitol Hill. This “discourse on America’s discourse” consisted of two keynotes and four panels and one of the most diverse group ever brought together on the subject. Practitioners to policymakers to observers came from the Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Congress, the media, other government agencies and from think tanks, consultants, universities, and other organizations based both inside and outside the United States. Many of these people had little reason to be in the same room, let alone the same table, let alone to discuss public diplomacy and strategic communication, or whatever they called activities that intended to understand, inform, and influence.

On its face, the discussion was organized around the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, the law intended to “promote the better understanding of the United States among the peoples of the world and to strengthen cooperative international relations.” The real purpose, however, was to facilitate a broad and on-the-record discussion about the purpose, structure, and direction of America’s global engagement.

The event was recorded and transcribed. It was to be broadcast live, but C-Span ran out of cameras covering a number of confirmation hearings, including now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s.

See the links below for Matt Armstrong 23-page report on the event, transcripts, speaker biographies, and more.

Speaker, moderator, and panelist biographies of the 2009 Smith-Mundt Symposium.

James K. Glassman
Under Secretary, Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
Term of Appointment: 06/10/2008 to present

James K. Glassman leads America’s public diplomacy outreach, which includes communications with international audiences, cultural programming, academic grants, educational exchanges, international visitor programs, and U.S. government efforts to confront ideological support for terrorism. He oversees the bureaus of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Public Affairs and International Information Programs, and participates in foreign policy development.

Mr. Glassman previously served as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent federal agency that oversees all U.S. government non-military international broadcasting, including the Voice of America (VOA), Alhurra, Radio Sawa, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and Radio and TV Martí. As the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Mr. Glassman is designated by the Secretary of State to serve as one of nine members of the BBG board.

Prior to assuming his position as Under Secretary, Mr. Glassman was a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington public policy think tank. He served as editor-in-chief of The American, AEI’s bimonthly magazine of business and economics.
He is the former president of The Atlantic Monthly Co., publisher of The New Republic, Executive Vice President of U.S. News & World Report, and editor-in-chief and co-owner of Roll Call, the congressional newspaper.
In 2003, he served on the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, a commission mandated by Congress.
Between July 1993 and July 2004, he was an investing columnist for The Washington Post. For four years, he also wrote an op-ed column for The Washington Post on political and economic issues. His articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal,Los Angeles Times, Forbes, and other publications. Glassman’s most recent book is The Secret Code of the Superior Investor (Crown).

He was also formerly host of Capital Gang Sunday on CNN and TechnoPolitics on PBS and has been a frequent guest on television public affairs programs. In 2000, he co-founded Tech Central Station.com, a technology and policy website. He has given frequent congressional testimony, recently on subjects as varied as the response to corporate accounting scandals, Social Security reform, personal investing, mutual fund regulation, and telecommunications policy.
He was a member of the President’s Council on the 21st Century Workforce and serves on the board of trustees of the U.S. Chamber Foundation and the Intel Corp. Public Policy Advisory Board.

Mr. Glassman is a graduate of Harvard University, where he was managing editor of the university daily, The Crimson. He is the recipient of, among other honors, the Warren Brookes Award of the American Legislative Exchange Council for distinguished journalism.

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Mike Doran

Mike Doran is an academic expert on US policy toward the Middle East who has held a number of senior government posts related to Middle East policy and to the application of soft power. Currently he is serving as Senior Adviser to the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the State Department. In addition, he has served at the Pentagon as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and at the NSC as the Senior Director of the Near East and North Africa. In January 2009, he will take up an appointment at the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University.

At State and the DoD, Doran has been responsible for promoting greater cooperation between the two departments on strategic communication in general and, more particularly, on countering ideological support for terrorism. At the White House, Doran helped to devise and coordinate national strategies on a variety of Middle East issues, including Arab-Israeli relations and efforts to contain Iran.

Prior to coming to government, Doran taught in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, where his work focused on the international politics of the Middle East. His publications include a book, Pan-Arabism before Nasser, which analyzes the first Arab-Israeli war as an inter-Arab conflict; and an article, “Somebody Else’s Civil War,” which was first article to advance the thesis that Osama bin Laden used the attacks of 9/11 as a tool for influencing conflicts within Muslim societies.

Originally from Indiana, Doran received a BA from Stanford in 1987 and a PhD from Princeton in 1997.

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Leonard J. Baldyga
Senior Consultant for Central and East European Programs
International Research & Exchanges Board

Leonard J. Baldyga is Senior Consultant for Central and East European Programs at the International Research & Exchanges Board, a consortium of nearly 150 American universities and colleges that provides field research opportunities for American specialists and analysts; develops and supports collaborative international conferences and workshops; and designs and implements multistage training opportunities for foreign leaders and professionals.

Mr. Baldyga is a former Director of the Office of European Affairs at the U.S. Information Agency. He retired from the foreign service in 1994 with the rank of Career Minister after more than three decades of service in Washington and overseas. As a senior officer he served as Public Affairs officer in Warsaw (1972-1975) and Mexico City (1976-1978) and Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs in Rome (1983-1988) and New Delhi (1988-1991). In Washington, he served as Deputy Director of European Affairs (Soviet Union and Eastern Europe 1979-1981) and as Director of European Affairs (1981-1983), a position he returned to again in 1992. He was USIA’s principal negotiator of bilateral cultural and scientific agreements with the Soviet Bloc in the 1979-1983 period.

Before entering the foreign service in 1962, Mr. Baldyga worked in journalism and publishing as a financial writer, city editor and assistant to the publisher. His early career assignments overseas were in Dakar, Senegal, Poznan, Poland, and Vienna, Austria, and as country affairs officer for Romania and Czechoslovakia in Washington.

He has a B.S. degree in communications from Southern Illinois University and a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University. He also attended the State Department’s Executive Seminar in National and International Affairs (Senior Seminar) in 1978-1979. In 1991-1992, he was recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Fellowship at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he also served as Acting Director of the Murrow Center and taught seminars in international political communication and in public diplomacy.

Mr. Baldyga was the recipient of the Presidential Distinguished Service Award in 1984, the Presidential Merit Service Award in 1988; the USIA Distinguished Service Award twice; and the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy from the Fletcher School in 1988. He was decorated with the Republic of Poland’s Officer’s Cross Order of Merit in 1994 and the Commander’s Cross in 2002.

In addition to his consultancy work, Mr. Baldyga currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Sabre Foundation (Boston); the Public Diplomacy Foundation; Partners for Democratic Change (Washington); and of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences (New York). He is a member of the Executive Committee of the National Polish-American Jewish-American Council and of the Alumni Advisory Council of the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. He has served as a member of the editorial board of the Polish Edition of Encyclopedia Britannica.

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Richard T. (Dick) Arndt

Richard T. (Dick) Arndt, Philadelphia-born, grew up in the New York’s Jersey suburbs. After working through his way through Princeton, he went to France as a Fulbright Student in Franco-American literary relations, working at the University of Dijon in the first year of Fulbright’s French program (1949-50). He taught through the 1950s at Columbia University, where he took his PhD in French literature of the 18th-century in 1959.

In 1961, he joined USIA, went to Beirut as deputy Cultural Officer, and was caught up in the discovery of cultural diplomacy, with the help of friends at the American University of Beirut. To this little-known art, he made a career commitment that has never changed. After Beirut came Sri Lanka (1963-66), followed by Tehran (1966-71), then a mid-career year at Princeton’s Wilson School, focused on manpower economics, i.e. education and socio-political development. He worked in Latin American Affairs, Foreign Student Affairs, Youth Affairs, and “American Specialists” in the pre-USIA Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in the State Department (1972-74), before going abroad again as Cultural Attaché in Rome (1974-78) and Paris (1978-80). He returned to various Washington jobs in cultural affairs and Middle Eastern affairs (1980-85). Retiring in 1985, he began three years of teaching at the University of Virginia, then three more, renewed in the Spring of 2007, at the George Washington University’s Elliott School and School of Education.

Among his board memberships, he has been President of the US Fulbright Association and Chairman of the National Peace Foundation; he is Co-chair of the advisory Council and Past-President of Americans for UNESCO, organizing citizen support for a productive US role in the organization which US withdrawal all but destroyed in 1984; he also chairs the US Committee to Save Ancient Tyre and is a member of the board of the Streit Council for a Union of Democracies.

His wife Lois W. Roth, an icon of US cultural diplomacy, died in 1986; in her memory, he founded and still chairs the Lois Roth Endowment, established from gifts and bequests of colleagues and friends. The Endowment manages more than a dozen ongoing projects in international exchange and translation, reaching fourteen countries; in translation, it sponsors the MLA bi-annual Roth prize for literary translation and the annual Roth Prize for translations from contemporary and ancient Persian literature; it contributes to the Prix Coindreau in France and the Dyankov Prize in Bujlgaria, rewarding the best annual translation from American literature. Additional exchange programs are conducted with Australia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, New Zealand, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Tu rkey, often in cooperation with Fulbright Commissions but also with the SUNY System, the American Scanidnavian Foundation, the National Gallery of Art, the National Peace Foundation, and the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation.

Four children and seven grandchildren are scattered around the globe.

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Barry Zorthian
Communications Consultant
Alcalde & Fay

Barry Zorthian is a communications consultant in the government and public affairs firm of Alcalde & Fay in Washington, DC. A former senior U.S. foreign officer and Vice President of Time Inc. (now Time Warner), he has an extensive background in government, journalism and communications. He is a graduate of Yale University and New York University School of Law, a retired Colonel in the U.S.Marine Corps Reserve, served 13 years with the Voice of America, the last five as Program Manager, and seven years in the foreign service, first in India and four and a half years in Vietnam in charge of all in-country and media relations. After twelve years with Time, including Time-Life Broadcast and Cable and Washington Affairs, he has been a communications consultant in Washington since 1980. He has served on the Board for International Broadcasting with jurisdiction over Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

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Mike Schneider
Director, Syracuse-Maxwell International Program

Michael Schneider directs the Syracuse-Maxwell Washington, D.C. International Program. The Program brings graduate and undergraduate students to Washington for a combination of courses and internships.

Previous to joining the Maxwell School faculty, Dr. Schneider helped direct global policy and information programs for the U.S. Information Agency, served as senior adviser to the Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs and represented USIA on the National Security Council and the State Department Policy Planning Council. In the late 1980s, he organized a series of informational and exchange initiatives with the USSR.

Dr. Schneider contributed to the evolution of U.S. public diplomacy through creation of a strategic planning process, and modernization of USIA information systems. He has led special studies of the Fulbright exchange program and U.S. broadcasting. His 2000 report, “Others Open Doors” analyzed international educational outreach activities of the U.S. and other nations.

Schneider began his USIA career with Foreign Service assignments in Calcutta and Dhaka. He earned his B.A. in American history from Rochester University, M.A. in American history from Columbia University and Ph.D. in international studies from American University.

Matthew C. Armstrong is principal and co-founder of Armstrong Strategic Insights Group, consultant, and publisher of MountainRunner. Mr. Armstrong writes on Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication in the context of irregular warfare and counterinsurgency. Mr. Armstrong has been published in books, journals, as well as presented at conferences and workshops on public diplomacy, strategic communication, the privatization of force, and unmanned warfare.

Prior to this, he spent a decade working as a technologist designing knowledge management systems subsequently developing high-value competencies in areas of Internet influence. Mr. Armstrong obtained both his B.A. in International Relations and a Master of Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California (USC). He has also done work at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in the areas of U.S. Intelligence, Contemporary European Security, and the Middle East.

Mr. Armstrong has presented at the U.S. Army War College, the National Defense University, Department of Homeland Security conferences, other Defense Department events, and the Foreign Service Institute. He frequently consults to the Departments of State and Defense.

Marc Lynch
Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
George Washington University

Marc Lynch is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. His most recent book, Voices of the New Arab Public: Al-Jazeera, Iraq, and Middle East Politics Today, was published by Columbia University Press. He writes frequently on Arab politics, the Arab media, Iraq, and Islamist movements in journals such as Foreign Affairs, the National Interest, the Wilson Quarterly, Foreign Policy, the European Journal of International Relations, Arab Media and Society, and Politics and Society. He also runs the influential Middle East politics blog Abu Aardvark (www.abuaardvark.com).

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David S. Jackson
Senior Advisor for Communications
Bureau of European & Eurasian Affairs, Department of State

David S. Jackson is a Senior Advisor for Communications in the Bureau of European & Eurasian Affairs at the Department of State. From 2002 to 2006, he served as the 26th Director of the Voice of America. Jackson came to VOA following a year at the Department of Defense, where he created and edited a public website devoted to news and information about the war against terrorism. Before entering public service, Jackson spent 23 years with Time Magazine as a correspondent based in Chicago, Washington DC, Houston, Cairo, Seoul, Hong Kong, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Education: University of Florida; BS in Journalism/Communications, 1971.

Residence: Washington, D.C.

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Jeffrey J. Grieco
Assistant Administrator, Legislative and Public Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development

Jeffrey Grieco, USAID’s Assistant Administrator for Legislative and Public Affairs (LPA) is the Agency’s senior advisor on and manager of all legislative relations and public affairs activities.

As head of LPA, he is responsible for all Congressional contacts and communications, manages all agency communications to both foreign and domestic audiences, and supervises USAID media and public affairs programming worldwide. He also serves as the agency’s lead congressional and public affairs representative at global meetings and conferences dealing with USAID’s reconstruction operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Liberia and other nations. His portfolio deals with issues as diverse as USAID’s $13 billion humanitarian and development programming in more than 100 countries, 84 of which have a full-time USAID Mission.

Mr. Grieco also serves as USAID’s senior representative on various interagency committees and working groups dealing with legislative affairs, communications, public diplomacy and public affairs, including inter-agency working groups such as the Joint Policy Council of the Department of State, the Administration’s Iraq Stabilization Group (ISG), and the Agency’s Muslim Outreach Coordinating Committee. He is the U.S. Representative to the Development Assistance Committee Communicators Network of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and participates in major multilateral efforts to improve aid effectiveness and communications.

Just prior to his current position, Mr. Grieco served as the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator of LPA, where he was responsible for all public affairs aspects of the Agency. As a result of his innovative efforts, he has been awarded numerous Agency awards including a Superior Unit Citation, Superior Group Award, Meritorious Unit Citation, and several Meritorious Honor Awards and helped found the Development Outreach & Communications (DOC) program of USAID placing trained communications and outreach staff in most USAID Missions abroad.

Prior to joining the Administration, he was an Associate Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, where he focused on U.S. Foreign Policy. He has also been an international consultant working with U.S. and foreign multinational corporations in more than 25 countries.

Mr. Grieco is a graduate of Georgetown University’s Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service Studies where he obtained a Masters Degree in Foreign Relations in 1986. He has also received a fellowship for graduate studies in comparative international management at Oxford University’s Templeton College. His undergraduate degree is from George Washington University’s Elliott School (1982) with a major in international affairs. He is proficient in Korean and French.

Rear Admiral Smith, a career Navy Public Affairs officer, is the Director of Communication for United States Central Command. He is responsible for synchronizing the command’s strategic communication efforts to include oversight of the Offices of Public Affairs, Information Operations and the Strategic Effects Division. He also coordinates communication efforts with United States Central Command’s component commands, the Department of State and numerous government and non-government agencies from the 27 countries that comprises Central

Commands area of responsibility.

Most recently, Rear Adm. Smith was Spokesman and Chief of Public Affairs for Multi-National Force-Iraq. Prior to deploying to Iraq, he was the U.S. Navy’s Chief of Information (CHINFO) serving as principal spokesman for the Department of the Navy and providing strategic communication counsel to the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations.

As CHINFO, he managed the Navy’s public affairs community, which included more than 2,500 active and reserve officer and enlisted and civilian communication professionals.

At the time of his selection to Flag in May 2006, Rear Adm. Smith was serving as Special Assistant for Public Affairs to the Vice Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff. Additional joint and NATO experience included serving as Director of Public Affairs, U.S. Joint Forces Command and Chief of Public Information for NATO’s Allied Command Transformation.

During this period, he oversaw the establishment of the Joint Public Affairs Support Element (JPASE), which provides combatant commanders with expeditionary public affairs, exercise and mission rehearsal training, and joint public affairs proponency.

Other public affairs tours of duty have included three overseas assignments to Guam, Italy, and Japan; at-sea assignments aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68), aboard the U.S. 6th Fleet flagship USS Belknap (CG 26), and the U.S. 7th Fleet flagship USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19); three previous tours in the Pentagon as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition, media desk officer and Director of Media Operations for the Chief of Information; and in direct fleet support as director of public affairs for Naval Air Station Whiting Field/Training Air Wing Five, Submarine Forces Atlantic Fleet and Commander U.S. Pacific Fleet.

A native of Dubuque, Iowa, Rear Adm. Smith received a Bachelor of Arts in Marketing from the University of Iowa, and was commissioned in 1982.

He was a 1997 honors graduate of Old Dominion University receiving a Master of Public Administration degree.

Kristin M. Lord
Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program and Saban Center for Middle East Policy
The Brookings Institution

Kristin Lord is a Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program and Saban Center for Middle East Policy at The Brookings Institution. At Brookings, Dr. Lord directs the science and technology initiative of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World.

Prior to joining Brookings, Dr. Lord was Associate Dean for Strategy, Research, and External Relations at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. In that capacity, she oversaw the School’s six research centers, graduate admissions, public affairs, and strategic initiatives. During her twelve year tenure at the Elliott School, she launched three master’s programs, ten certificate programs, a global network of university partnerships, the School’s skills curriculum, and numerous educational programs for students, diplomats, and mid-career professionals from the public, private, and non-profit sectors. As a member of the faculty, she also taught courses on U.S. public diplomacy, U.S. foreign policy and the causes of war.

In 2005-2006, Lord served as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and Special Adviser to the Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs. In that role, she worked on a wide range of issues including international science and technology cooperation, international health, democracy and the rule of law, communications, and public diplomacy.

Dr. Lord is the author of Perils and Promise of Global Transparency: Why the Information Revolution May Not Lead to Security Democracy or Peace, (SUNY Press, 2006), Power and Conflict in an Age of Transparency, edited with Bernard I. Finel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), and numerous book chapters, policy papers, and articles. In 2008, she published two Brookings reports A New Millennium of Knowledge? The Arab Human Development Report on Building a Knowledge Society, Five Years On and Voices of America: U.S. Public Diplomacy in the 21st Century. Her publications have appeared in International Studies Quarterly, Science, Foreign Service Journal, National Interest on-line, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Dr. Lord is a non-resident fellow at the University of Southern California’s Center for Public Diplomacy and served as a non-resident Fellow at Brookings in 2007-2008. In 2006-2007, Dr. Lord served as project director of a Council on Foreign Relations study group entitled “Beyond Institutions: Building Cultural Support for the Rule of Law.” She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University and her B.A., magna cum laude, in international studies from American University.

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Ted Tzavellas
Vice President, S4 Inc.

Mr. Tzavellas is a Vice President with S4 Inc., a company specializing in information domain-based solutions and services. He joined S4 Inc. in early 2007 after having held a position as Senior Analyst with Lockheed Martin. Prior to that, Mr. Tzavellas was Director of Business Development with the Industrial Consulting and Systems Group, a $450 million enterprise of American Management Systems, Inc., a “top-five” business consulting, information management, and IT services company. He previously held a position as Operations Manager with Cubic Applications, where he headed the Intelligence and Information Operations Support Group.

Mr. Tzavellas is acknowledged in the public, private, and juridical sectors as an expert who provides thought leadership in strategic communication, information operations, perception management, risk/ crisis communications, message development, and information shaping activities. He has helped clients pattern the flow of information and its effects on decision-makers, constituents, and key influencers. With his deep understanding of human factors, and technology and its applications, Mr. Tzavellas has helped clients identify current, and future, informational and technical threats, vulnerabilities, and protection capabilities and measures.

In November 2001, Mr. Tzavellas assumed responsibilities as Senior Information Policy and Strategy Advisor to the Department of Defense, Joint Staff Deputy Director Global Operations, Information Operations (DDGO-IO) under the Joint Staff J-3, where he worked closely with various Federal Departments and Agencies to develop information policies, strategies, technologies, and actions that apply the perceptual assets and informational capabilities of the US Government to achieve national objectives.

Mr. Tzavellas has provided technical support, expertise, and testimony in cases of product liability and other litigation efforts. He is recognized for his unique support to the States of Florida and Texas during groundbreaking major litigation against the Tobacco Industry; to Michigan in its litigation against Publishers Clearing House; and to a major class action in Canada. He has lectured at Northeastern University School of Law on strategic communication and perception management, and their application to jurisprudence, and to various business enterprise processes and practices.

He has been engaged by different organizations as a recognized expert to examine their communication strategies in light of evolving media and audiences; to develop communication strategies; to establish campaigns for regional influence; and to review the role of new media, and how to manage and measure effects in the current information environment. He was also invited by the Lomonosov Moscow State University to present to the Second International Forum on “Partnership Among State, Business Community and Civil Society in Ensuring Information Security”.

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Nancy Snow
Associate Professor of Public Diplomacy
Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University

She teaches in the dual degree Masters Program in Public Diplomacy sponsored by Newhouse and the Maxwell School for Citizenship and Public Affairs. Snow is a former USIA and State Department Presidential Management Fellow and author/editor of five books, including the recently published RoutledgeHandbook of Public Diplomacy (with Philip M. Taylor). She blogs about America’s arsenal of persuasion for the Huffington Post. Contact her at www.nancysnow.com

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Colleen P. Graffy
Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy

Colleen Graffy assumed her duties as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs in September 2005. In this capacity, Ms. Graffy oversees public diplomacy and public affairs programs for the Bureau and coordinates efforts with Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs James Glassman. Prior to her current position, she was the Academic Director and Associate Professor of Law at the London Law Program for Pepperdine University School of Law.

Originally from Santa Barbara, California, Ms. Graffy earned her BA from Pepperdine University and her MA from Boston University. She then served as co-director of Pepperdine’s Year-in-Europe program in Heidelberg, Germany.

Ms. Graffy completed the Diploma in Law in London. After attending the Inns of Court School of Law, she was called to the Bar of England and Wales as a Barrister of the Middle Temple and received her LLM through King’s College, University of London with Merit. As academic director of the London Program, she was in charge of the London Moot and Clinical Program and taught International Public Law, International Environmental Law, International Law and the Use of Force, and Legal Ethics. Altogether, she has resided nearly 20 years in London, where she was often invited by the media to communicate the U.S. point of view on international issues.

Ms. Graffy is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, The British Institute of International and Comparative Law, The Pilgrims, and The British American Project and was Chairman of the Society of English and American Lawyers. She is a Bencher at the Middle Temple.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Graffy has written on legal issues in the United States and Britain and is a frequent commentator for radio and television on transatlantic political, legal, and cultural issues.

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Bill Kiehl
PDWorldwide

William P. Kiehl is the founder President and CEO of PD Worldwide, consultants in international public affairs, higher education management and cross-cultural communications.

In February 2004, he was appointed Executive Director of the Public Diplomacy Council at the School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University. He served in that position through April 2007 when he was elected to the Public Diplomacy Council’s Board of Directors. He retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in November 2003 but continued to serve as an Instructor in Public Diplomacy in the School of Professional and Area Studies at the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State. He was awarded a doctoral degree in Higher Education Management at the University of Pennsylvania. His primary interest of research is international education.

As the Diplomat in Residence at the U.S. Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership, he was the Senior Fellow of the U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute (now the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute) until July 2003. His duties included advising the Center and the Institute on foreign policy and conducting outreach with the academic, military and civilian government communities. He continues to advise the U.S. military on issues of influence operations.

With the reorganization of the Foreign Affairs agencies in October 1999, Dr. Kiehl was named Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Resources of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Department of State. With USIA he was Acting Deputy Associate Director for Educational and Cultural Affairs and also Staff Director of the Interagency Working Group on U.S. Government-Sponsored International Exchanges and Training (IAWG).

Overseas, Dr. Kiehl was Director of the U.S. Information Service in Bangkok, Thailand. As the first Chairman of the Bangkok Interagency Council on Administrative Support Services, he led representatives of some 34 government agencies in finding efficient solutions to administrative problems at one of the largest U.S. overseas missions. He also directed U.S. press and cultural affairs in London, Helsinki and Prague. His other Washington assignments with USIA included: Acting Director and Deputy Director, Office of Program Coordination and Development and Country Affairs Officer for the USSR and the Baltic States.

William Kiehl joined the U. S. Foreign Service in 1970 and retired with the rank of Minister-Counselor in the Senior Foreign Service. His first overseas posting was to Belgrade, Yugoslavia; followed by assignments to Zagreb and to Colombo, Sri Lanka. Kiehl escorted the exhibition “Agriculture USA” throughout the former Soviet Union in the late 1970s and thereafter served as Embassy Press Officer in Moscow. A decade later he was Public Affairs Advisor to Ambassador Max Kampelman and the U.S. Delegation to the CSCE Moscow Conference on the Human Dimension. He was a principal member of negotiation teams for cultural and exchanges agreements with the former Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. During his career he directed media responsibilities for overseas visits by Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton to the United Kingdom, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine and Thailand as well as for summit-level meetings in Geneva, Helsinki and London.

In addition to his Doctor of Education degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Kiehl earned an honors degree from the University of Scranton and an M.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. He was Honorary Visiting Fellow at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London. Before joining the Foreign Service he worked in the Governor’s Office of Pennsylvania, his home state. He is the recipient of numerous Foreign Service honor awards and two Hammer Awards– for his role in reinventing USIA’s Information Bureau in 1994 and for his work with the IAWG in 1998. He received the Frank J. O’Hara Award for Distinction in Government Service from his alma mater in 2002.

Mr. Wilson, a native of Tucson, Arizona, and a graduate of Stanford University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, is President of The Leaders Project, which he co-founded in 2001 with former Defense Secretary William Cohen. This non-profit initiative brings together global groups of successor generation leaders — from politics, government, business, the military, the media, arts and sciences, NGOs and community organizations – several times a year to address issues of ongoing international concern on a cross-disciplinary basis. Mr. Wilson also serves as member of the six-person Board of Directors of the New York-based Howard Gilman Foundation; in that capacity, he oversees the development and implementation of the Foundation’s domestic and international policy programs at White Oak, the Foundation’s internationally-acclaimed wildlife and conference facility in northern Florida.

From 2002-2007, Mr. Wilson served as a Vice President of The Cohen Group, handling strategic communications issues for clients in telecommunications, aerospace, security, transportation, software and other areas, and as a Vice President for PSB in Seattle, overseeing strategic communications messaging and research for Microsoft, the company’s largest client. (Mr. Wilson has not been a lobbyist in either position or in any capacity.) Mr. Wilson has also served as Vice President for Strategic Development for Business Executives for National Security (BENS) (2000-2002).

From 1997-1999, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. He spent a year as National Political Director of the Democratic Leadership Council — working with Senate and House members and governors and developing the DLC’s state and local networks — before returning to the Pentagon in the summer of 2000 to become Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and the senior communications strategist for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. During his tenure at the Pentagon, Mr. Wilson coordinated communications and long-range public affairs strategy on issues including defense reform, base closures, Bosnia, NATO expansion, new technology and military quality of life. He was twice presented the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the Pentagon’s top civilian honor.

During the first four years of the Clinton Administration, Mr. Wilson served as Director of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs for the U.S. Information Agency, where he coordinated negotiations to consolidate international broadcasting, with savings of some $400 million. He later became Senior Advisor to the Director of USIA.

In 1996, Mr. Wilson left government service to coordinate the Clinton-Gore re-election effort in his home state of Arizona. Mr. Wilson conceived and designed the strategy which resulted in the only Democratic presidential win in Arizona since 1948 (breaking the longest Republican presidential winning streak in any state in US history).

In 1987, Mr. Wilson established the first international office for the City of Phoenix, which has become a template for similar city offices throughout the nation. He helped Phoenix to secure its first international air service and served as consultant to the National League of Cities’ International Subcommittee.

In 1981, he became Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to former U.S. Senator Gary Hart. He organized Senator Hart’s meetings with world leaders, drafted the Senator’s high-technology trade bill (which was incorporated into the Trade Act of 1982) and served as a deputy campaign manager for Senator Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign. Prior to 1981, he served as a public diplomacy Foreign Service Information Officer at U.S. diplomatic posts in Naples, Rome, and London.

Mr. Wilson has been featured as a commentator on BBC; his opinion pieces have been published in national and regional publications. In addition to his Howard Gilman Foundation work, Mr. Wilson is also a Member of the Boards of Directors of Third Way and the National Security Network.

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Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.)
U.S. House of Representatives

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Rep. Paul Hodes (D-NH)U.S. House of Representatives

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Lynne Weil
Communications Director
House Committee on Foreign Affairs

Ms. Weil oversees all foreign affairs media matters for Congressman Howard L. Berman (D-CA), the chairman of the committee. She writes speeches, op-eds and other media-related materials, is Chairman Berman’s spokesperson and serves as his legislative aide on public diplomacy issues. She held the same position under the late Chairman Tom Lantos from 2003 to early 2008.

From 2001 to 2003 Ms. Weil was the press secretary for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under its chairman, Senator Joe Biden. She started on Capitol Hill as a journalism fellow through the American Political Science Association, spending her fellowship year as a foreign policy aide to Senator Ted Kennedy.

Ms. Weil spent 15 years as a journalist, nearly nine of them in Europe. Her work included stories on politics, economics and culture from 18 countries for National Public Radio, The New York Times, The Boston Globe and the BBC. She earned a BA in communication studies at UCLA and in 2001 completed a Master’s degree in public policy at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.